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John Curran. Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making - Includes Two Unpublished Poirot Stories
Agatha Christie’s. Secret Notebooks. Fifty Years of Mysteriesin the Making. John Curran
Notes
Foreword. MATHEW PRICHARD
PREFACE. Shadows in Sunlight—Interlude at. Greenway, Summer 1954
Introduction
1 A Murder is Announced: The Beginning of a Career
Poirot Investigates…
Verdict…
Poirot and The Big Four. Hercule Poirot
Readability
Plotting
Fairness
Productivity
2 Dumb Witness: The Evidenceof the Notebooks
…idea in an exercise book…
what I invariably do is lose the exercise book…
…I usually have about half a dozen on hand…
…if I had kept all these things neatly sorted…
…and filed…
…and labelled…
…something scribbled down…
…a kind of sketch of a plot…
…it often stimulates me, if not to write that identical plot at least to write something else…
EXHIBIT A: THE DETECTION CLUB
The Detection Club in the Notebooks
3 The Moving Finger:Agatha Christie at Work
Dumb Witnesses
Pigeon among the Cats
Motive and Opportunity
Remembered Deaths
The ABC of Murder
Ten Little Possibilities
Murder Made Easy
Destinations Unknown
Surprise, Surprise!
EXHIBIT B: OTHER CRIME WRITERS IN THE NOTEBOOKS
4 Cat among the Pigeons:The Nursery Rhyme Murders
‘Sing a Song of Sixpence’ December 1929
‘How Does Your Garden Grow?’ August 1935
Ten Little Niggers 6 November 1939
One, Two, Buckle my Shoe 4 November 1940
Four and Twenty Blackbirds March 1941
Five Little Pigs 11 January 1943
Miscellaneous
Three Blind Mice (Radio Play 30 May 1947; Short Story 31 December 1948; Play 25 November 1952)
Crooked House 23 May 1949
A Pocket Full of Rye 9 November 1953
Hickory Dickory Dock 31 October 1955
EXHIBIT C: AGATHA CHRISTIE IN THE NOTEBOOKS
5 Blind Man’s Buff: A Game of Murder
‘Manx Gold’ May 1930
The A.B.C. Murders 6 January 1936
‘Strange Jest’ July 1944
A Murder is Announced 5June 1950
Spider’s Web Premiere 14 December 1954
Dead Man’s Folly
EXHIBIT D: TRUE CRIME IN THE NOTEBOOKS
Lizzie Borden
Constance Kent
Crippen and Le Neve
Charles Bravo
6 The Girl in the Train: Murder Aboard
‘Death on the Nile’ (short story) July 1933
Death in the Clouds 1 July 1935
‘Problem at Sea’ February 1936
Death on the Nile (novel) 1 November 1937
Four-Fifty from Paddington 4 November 1957
7 Elephants Can Remember:Murder in Retrospect
Dumb Witness 5 July 1937
Sparkling Cyanide 3 December 1945
Death Comes as the End 29 March 1945
Mrs McGinty’s Dead 3 March 1952
Ordeal by Innocence 3 November 1958
Sleeping Murder 11 October 1976
EXHIBIT E: N OR M?—A TITLES QUIZ
8 Destination Unknown: Murder Abroad
The Man in the Brown Suit 22 August 1924
’The House at Shiraz’ June 1933
‘Problem at Pollensa Bay’ November 1935
’Triangle at Rhodes’ May 1936
Murder in Mesopotamia 6 July 1936
Appointment with Death 2 May 1938
A Caribbean Mystery 16 November 1964
9 In a Glass Darkly:The Unknown Christie
Rule of Three 20 December 1962
The Rats
Afternoon at the Seaside
The Patient
Fiddlers Three 3 August 1972
Akhnaton Published 14 May 1973
EXHIBIT F: THE HOUSE OF DREAMS: UNUSED IDEAS
10 Sanctuary: A Holiday for Murder
Peril at End House
‘Murder in the Mews’/’The Market Basing Mystery’
Hercule Poirot’s Christmas
Evil under the Sun
Towards Zero
At Bertram’s Hotel
Hallowe’en Party
11 Poirot Investigates:The Labours of Hercules
The Labours of Hercules
’The Nemean Lion’
‘The Lernean Hydra’
‘The Arcadian Deer’
’The Erymanthian Boar’
‘The Augean Stables’
‘The Stymphalean Birds’
’The Cretan Bull’
’The Horses of Diomedes’
’The Girdle of Hyppolita’
‘The Flock of Geryon’
‘The Apples of the Hesperides’
’The Capture of Cerberus’
EXHIBIT G: MURDER IS EASY: SEEDS OF INSPIRATION
12 The Body in the Library:Murder by Quotation
Sad Cypress
The Moving Finger
The Hollow
Taken at the Flood
The Pale Horse
The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side 12 November 1962
Endless Night 30 October 1967
THE CAPTURE OF CERBERUS
When was it written? Clue No. 1
Clue No. 2
Why was it never published?
’The Capture of Cerberus’ (unpublished version) in the Notebooks
The Capture of Cerberus (The Labours of Hercules XII) i
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Notes
THE INCIDENT OF THE DOG’s BALL
When was it written?
Clue No. 1
Clue No. 2
Clue No. 3
Clue No. 4
Clue No. 5
Clue No. 6
Conclusion?
Why was it never published?
Clue No. 1
Clue No. 2
Clue No. 3
Conclusion
’The Incident of the Dog’s Ball’ in the Notebooks
The Incident of the Dogs Ball1 (From the notes of Captain Arthur Hastings O.B.E.) i
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Notes
Select Bibliography
Index of Titles
The Complete Miss Marple
Acknowledgements
Copyright
About the Publisher
